


Caledonia, You're Calling Me

by IndraraSkye



Series: Caledonia [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, I don't know, Magic Stiles, but I don't know if it's clear or matters here so I didn't tag it, estrangement from BH pack, hints of a background relationship, more of a character study maybe, zero dialog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 20:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndraraSkye/pseuds/IndraraSkye
Summary: A thirty year old Stiles has to mentally prepare himself to head back to Beacon Hills after eight years away. Everything has changed for him, and many things haven't been properly laid to rest. That's it. This whole thing is him dealing with the prospect of heading home and facing emotions and feelings.





	Caledonia, You're Calling Me

**Author's Note:**

> This little glimpse into the angsty head of a grown-up Stiles Stilinski was loosely inspired by Emerald Rose's version of the song "Caledonia," hence the work title. I say loosely, because boy is the connection tenuous at best. The words in italics are meant to be past comments one person made to him that pertain directly to thoughts in his head. Sorry if they're a bit confusing. Those are the hints of background relationship, and they also tie into the big argument eight years ago, but I don't think anything is specific enough to warrant tagging the relationship itself. Sorry if you disagree. Rated T for curse words--nothing exciting there. Also, not beta read. Not really read much at all past the first draft. All mistakes are my own.

He folded the last of his shirts—the garish royal purple Aloha shirt with the hula doll print all over it, his favorite—and laid it on top of the pile in his suitcase, steeling his resolve with a deep breath. He was a grown man, would be thirty-one in April. He could close a suitcase, catch a cab, and spend time somewhere he hated. He did it all the time when he was on the job. Texas was hell, but he’d endured it for three months straight to get a project completed. This was going to be no different. _Your hometown is not the same thing as Texas, baby. You don’t need me there. Nobody actually wants me there_.

He patted the pockets of his carpenter’s jeans, part of his standard work uniform thanks to their plentiful pockets and straps. His Aloha shirts just brightened his day. _Have you ever even been to Hawaii, Stiles? That is hideous._ He had his keys, his wallet, his sunglasses, his birch and oak, his mountain ash. His main identity was tucked away in his wallet, a forest green leather trifold with a triquetra embossed on the front flap. A coven out of Miami had given it to him as thanks for a job he did for them a few years ago. It was starting to fray at the edges—the wallet, not the job. His jobs didn’t fray. Two more identities were secured in his suitcase, an emergency identity in his laptop bag. _I need to know that you’ll be safe. Consider them insurance. Carry them with you always_.

The Russell Pack didn’t need his services anymore, happy with the results of his work, and Montana might not have been Texas, but it still wasn’t high on his list of places to settle down in. He didn’t actually have anything on his list of places to settle down in, if he was being honest. He wasn’t the “settle down” type, as it turned out. He’d thought maybe, once, but he’d been wrong. He’d been wrong often back then. _You don’t need to settle down, dear boy. How many people would have missed out if you had?_ He closed the suitcase, locked it down—took a minute to wish he could lock EVERYTHING down. 

He’d faced down rabid feral werewolves. He’d fought against entire nests of vamps. He’d muted bean sidhes and locked down faerie mounds. He’d woven protections for entire covens of witches, transported nagas to refugee camps under the radar, even bantered with the Monkey King himself one memorable time. Not one, but three leprechauns owed him favors. He could make it through his father’s retirement celebration. It was one afternoon, then he could look for another contract to keep himself busy. He hadn’t seen his dad in eight years. Hadn’t even talked to him in six. A sigh slipped out of him and his shoulders sagged. He wasn’t obligated to go; nobody would be surprised to not see him there, but the PULL. The damn pull was irresistible at this point. _Like attracts like, you idiot. You’re as magical as that entire town is._ The ebb and flow, the pull and sway of that fucking town was pulling him back down. He hadn’t understood back then, hadn’t felt the pull of his own hometown. He’d been human, slow and muted and CUT OFF. He could feel it now. _I warned you, didn’t I? It’s like a siren’s song, luring you in and killing you off. Stay safe there, love_. All the supernatural crossroads called to him, but Beacon Hills beckoned him. He knew those ley lines. He’d felt the thrum and the strum of its stunted nemeton all his life. The force of its power battered through his blood stream, and he had denied it for nearly nine years. He couldn’t put the homecoming off any longer. Magic demanded what magic demanded, and he could answer its call alone. _For the seven hundredth time, Stiles, I will not go back there with you. I wasn’t even THERE last time, and look what happened!_

The Russell pups had loved his stories of home, had gaped at his physical scars and stared greedily at the ink on his skin related to the shenanigans of his later teenage years. He’d started telling them his “bedtime stories” the night after the invitation had arrived, and he hadn’t stopped over the last month. He supposed they did sound like fun stories of adventure and family and love and excitement to an outsider. He tried to gloss over all the loss found there, too. So much loss. Love and family, grief and abandonment. New life, new death. Always the extremes against each other, nature always finding that balance even against ends of spectrums. He understood so much more about that now, about striking natural balances and protecting against extremes, avoiding ridiculous risks because the rewards were smaller and mostly misleading. _You’ve always been a quick study. I knew you’d get there_. He’d learned to use the elements around him and to go with the flow of currents around him rather than fight against them. He wondered how different things would be if he’d learned these things in high school. 

He grabbed his chalk markers and his herbal cigarettes off the dresser, throwing them in the pocket of his bright red Aloha shirt before hefting the closed suitcase and the laptop bag off the hotel room’s king bed and heading toward the end of one job and the start of his next task. _I will see you when you get done. You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. You will get through this_.

***

When he’d settled into his seat on the plane, business class since it was only a few hours between Montana and Beacon Hills and he didn’t feel like paying the money for first class, he pulled the invitation out of the front pocket of his laptop bag. It was printed on cream colored heavy paper, something more expensive than simple cardstock, with gilded edges. He’d pulled it out of the envelope and realized almost immediately that his father hadn’t been involved with its creation much at all, which didn’t surprise him in the least. His father had always been a practical person, not predisposed to things simply because they were pretty or shiny or sentimental. His father had done a job all these years, and now it was time for him to not do a job anymore. He’d never wanted to actually celebrate the simple things, let alone the big moments in life. _We should go to Rome when you finish in Beacon Hills. Celebrate your big victory_. He was good at pep talks and happy words, but that was really as far as he’d ever seemed to want to take things. His father never threw him birthday parties. His father had never decorated for holidays. His father hadn’t organized his graduation parties. Most of the time his dad hadn’t even been there on those occasions. He’d at least made it to the graduation parties. _You should be glad I missed them, Stiles. I would have killed them all_.

It might have made things easier if his dad hadn’t made it to the last one. 

The print on the invitation was heavy, bold lines of script pressed into the paper proclaiming that Sheriff John Stilinski requested his presence at the celebration of his retirement from forty years of law enforcement. Gifts were not necessary; a donation could be made to the Volunteer Firefighters of Beacon County in their stead. The retirement ceremony would start promptly at 1 pm, celebratory gathering to follow. 

He wondered if Scott would be there. He had zero doubt in his mind that this entire thing was Melissa McCall’s doing, and Scott and his father had always been close. He wondered what he would do when he saw Scott there. They weren’t exactly…on good terms. _Scott will come around, baby boy. He always does. He loves you almost as much as I do, you know_. They hadn’t been for eight years, almost nine. He wondered what Scott would do when he saw HIM at the party. Maybe they’d all be lucky and Scott wouldn’t be able to get away for the party. He didn’t know where his once-brother had settled, only that Beacon Hills had been without an alpha werewolf for a few years now. He didn’t care much past that. 

He tossed the invitation onto the empty seat beside him and scrubbed his hands through his hair. It was getting too long. Alpha Russell’s mate had teased him about being scruffy last week. He debated stopping at the barber shop in Beacon Hills before heading to the ceremony, but he probably wouldn’t have time. _It curls around your ears, you know, just a little bit. And you’ve got a cowlick right there. I almost want to lick it_. He wasn’t going to be around long enough to unpack in his hotel room, but he still had to check in, and the ceremony was that afternoon because he believed in procrastinating before facing past fears. 

He only got another fifty pages of his current book read during the rest of the flight. It was one of the Dalai Lama’s books, and he could probably use all the calming Buddhist ideas he could get on this trip, so he’d been hoping to lose himself in the words until they touched down. _You would appreciate the words of the Dalai Lama. It’s not entirely about religion, moron_. The flight was fairly turbulent, though, and he hoped it wasn’t a sign of times to come.

***

It felt like an eternity had passed before he’d collected his one checked bag and wandered his way out the “arrivals” door of the airport. A dark-skinned man with sharp cheekbones and eyes too bright to be natural stood by a beige Ford Taurus, a piece of paper bearing “Stiles” in his hand. He wandered over and shook the man’s hand before giving the name of his hotel and a rough itinerary of his stay in the town. A nest out of San Francisco he’d worked with some years ago had owed him, so he asked to use their driver for thirty-six or so hours and they’d agreed. He hadn’t let anyone in Beacon Hills know he was coming back. He suspected they wouldn’t care one way or the other. _It is polite to RSVP, you little shit. Have I taught you no manners over the last decade?_ He settled into the back seat and stared languidly out the window while the driver settled himself into the driver’s seat and started the car. 

The driver didn’t speak on the ride to the hotel. One of the great things about vamps was that they were always quiet, settled. They were deliberate in both their words and their actions, and they didn’t need background noise. _But they have no heartbeats! It’s completely unforgivable that I can’t simply listen to tell when they’re lying. They make me work entirely too hard_.

He watched the town roll past him. It was the same town. It had the same little storefronts and brick buildings and cookie cutter residential areas. It still looked picturesque and quaint. He wondered if the same undercurrent of terror hummed through it as had when he was younger. He smiled softly and hoped not. Age had settled him. He hoped it had settled the town. Beacon Hills deserved some rest. Maybe he’d stop by the nemeton before heading out again. He had some experience and knowledge under his belt now. He should check on it and offer some consolation if it needed some. _That fucking tree is not your responsibility, Stiles. Let it go. It’s going to bring you nothing but grief_. Deaton should have done that a decade ago, but if there’s one thing that time had taught him, it’s that Deaton hadn’t known enough. He was intelligent, well read and well versed in the basics, but when it all came down to facts and truths, Deaton was a small-town druid with a small-town mentality. Their nemeton had suffered for it, though it was nobody’s fault, really—too many books and not enough experience had mired them in problems and struggles. He’d always been too vocal, pushed too hard against the small-town around him. _You don’t have to tell them. You haven’t told them in the past three years, and we’ve all done just fine, haven’t we? This won’t make you happy like you think it will_.

It was probably inevitable that he’d exile himself at some point. He could see that now. He hadn’t meant the explosion eight years ago, but he had meant every implication behind it. He knew there had to be MORE—more than what he’d learned in his four years at university, more than what he’d seen for all those years in Beacon Hills, more than loosely banding together to prevent catastrophes, more than bitterness and sorrow in the world of the supernatural…more than superhuman beings hating themselves at every turn. 

He’d been right. Werewolves could embrace themselves and howl happily under the light of the full moon. Bean sidhes could accept both love and war. Hellhounds WERE usually dog shaped. Vampires existed. Witches could be good. Druids could share knowledge. The supernatural world at large DID police itself. Hunters didn’t hold that much power. Evil wasn’t always evil, and good wasn’t always good. Beacon Hills was just broken, as he’d suspected. 

The car turned into the hotel parking lot and stopped in front of the hotel entrance. The driver agreed to meet him there in two hours. He hauled his luggage inside and checked himself in. He hadn’t recognized anyone he used to know. He took it for the win it was and headed up to his room.

***

It took him forty-five minutes to get himself ready for the ceremony. He’d showered and run some gel through his hair before finger combing it and calling it done. He changed into a pair of loose-fit jeans and a plain long-sleeved blue button-up shirt, sliding on the only pair of dress shoes he owned. He glamoured his naturally violet eyes and the ink on his skin, took out most of his metal. _Your eyes are the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen, love. Your ink tells stories, sings me to sleep at night. Never fucking change_. He looked into the mirror in the bathroom, and the man looking back at him could have easily resided in a small town like this. Whiskey-brown eyes took in clean, mole-dotted skin and business casual attire. He could have been an accountant with a wife and a kid and a picket fence given this appearance. _You could have gone into IT, you know. Coding would have led to a more stable life than magic_. It felt…unnatural. It was entirely contrived, and it made his skin crawl. He had never been this person, even when he’d lived in Beacon Hills. He hadn’t been pierced or tattooed back then, and his eyes had been brown, but nobody ever looked at him and announced that he fit in. Nobody ever expected him to get a wife and a kid and a picket fence. He was proud of the person he was, of the person he’d become. He’d sweated and worked for that person. He’d learned and experimented for that person. He’d ENDURED for that person.

He also knew that he wasn’t changing again. He would go and sit in the back and sip at red wine and play at being a normal person, a human being again. Then he would get the hell out of Dodge and go save some dryads or something. _Let people believe what they want, Stiles. Their conclusions are enough for them. You can be whomever you want to be, but let them have their conclusions. It’ll be more peaceful for you that way_.

He sat on the bed and stared at nothing until it was time for the driver to pick him up.

He should have been helping plan the party. He wasn’t even sure why he was there. He should have been looking forward to seeing his brother, his packmates. He hoped to all the gods he didn’t bump into someone he’d known. He should have been a knight of the round table. He was a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. He’d hoped for Caledonia. He got California. _You need to stop living in your head, you ridiculous thing. Overthinking is going to be your downfall someday, and there’s no guarantee that I’ll be there to help pick up the pieces. I’m getting old, you know_.

He checked the gold watch now adorning his wrist ( _it’s something of me, anyway_ ) and pocketed his cell phone. He would watch his father accept a different kind of gold watch. He would go to the party and deal with any resulting fallout. He would talk idly about his travels and his academic pursuits and not about his freelance and contract work. He would give his only remaining family a nice afternoon, and then he’d be off with the morning, probably on his way to Rome.

It was time.


End file.
